The Minnesota Vikings made it official today, inking veteran quarterback Brett Favre to his usual .4 year contract for the 2010 season. The deal is very good for Favre, who will be payed $12 million dollars for only being with the team from September through the end of December.

The contract states that starting in January he is free to revert, as has become customary, from the form of a future hall of fame quarterback to that of your mother playing QB at the holiday touch football game. He also gets to bypass the annoying offseason routine and training camp activities.

"I am very excited about this deal," said Favre at a press conference. "At my age, these unusual .4 year deals are the best. I can come in, play great in the regular season, and then throw some quick picks and send the team and myself home for the offseason. As you all know, for me, the offseason is what I really concentrate on nowadays. Will I come back, who should I text or tweet secret information to, practicing at various high schools. The offseason is what I really love, and with this short contract I can get the most out of it."

Favre has been a rogue gunslinger the past few years, signing a .2 year contract with the New York Jets after being unceremoniously released from Green Bay Packers. He performed great for the length of that contract too, leading the Jets to the best record in the AFC for the first 2 months, before things went to hell once his contracted time was up.

The Vikings remain hopeful that Favre will resign with them once the playoffs start, but it's looking doubtful at this time.

The Los Angeles Dodgers phoned the Boston Red Sox today to tell them they finally pulled a prank equal to the one done to them 3 years ago when they got Manny Ramirezed. The Dodgers famously fell for a classic Manny Ramirez, one of the most popular juvenile pranks, when they took Manny off waivers from Boston in 2007.

He went on to let minor injuries hamper his play until he finally fell out of favor with LA, and left the same way he was let go from Boston. But the hilarity ensued as the Dodgers phoned the White Sox to tell them they were placing Manny Ramirez on waivers.

"Yeah, the White Sox totally fell for the oldest trick in the book!" said coach Joe Torre as he talked to Theo Epstein. "I had to stifle the laughter as I told Ozzie Guillen I had a possible future hall of fame player who could help his team get in the playoffs this year. The fool actually went for it! He actually thinks Manny can help their team get to the playoffs!

"I put Manny in a box and sent him next day delivery via UPS immediately! These suckers aren't going to know what hits them when they open up this package!"

While this is only the latest most famous trick, a Manny Ramirezing is a common prank for kids. Many people have been called by children, asking if their refrigerator is running...and also if they would like to pick up Manny Ramirez off waivers.

If they should be foolish enough to say yes, they are then sent the troublesome player who proceeds to bring down the morale of their entire household. He refuses to run out ground balls, take out the trash, clean his hair and pine tar out of the bathtub after a shower, or play a day game of dominoes after a night game.

Eventually, the family has no choice but to place Manny on waivers in their front yard until a neighbor picks him up in a truck and takes him to their team.

Like the Arizona Cardinals Larry Fitzgerald in this year's NFL playoffs, Derrick Rose is having a coming out party of his own so far in round one of the NBA playoffs. The Chicago Bulls point guard made his playoff debut a big one, scoring 36 points and adding 11 assists in their opening win over the Celtics.

But it was not until after the game when being interviewed by a locker room reporter that things got awkward. When asked how he felt about having such a big coming out party in his first game he replied with an answer that shocked everyone.

"It feels great, now that the whole world knows I'm gay!" Rose shouted, making everyone in the locker room stop and stare.

"What do you mean you're gay? That really wasn't what I meant..." continued the reporter.

"I'm gay, I'm so gay!" he replied. "You know that gay sex thing you always are hearing about with the penises and the butts and the whole deal? I love that stuff! It just feels so good to come out and say it, get it off my chest. You're so right! And you're throwing me a party for it? I hope there's a cake, and I hope it's shaped like the part of a man I love to eat in my bedroom as well...

"I've had to load up all this rap music on my iPod here just to fit in, but I really only listen to the Streisand and Cher I put on this thing. It just gets me charged up to get out there and commit a hard charging foul on another man!"

"Yes...There's something I've wanted to say since I first got here in Chicago..." began Derrick. "I want to redecorate this locker room! Makeover! The colors and furniture in here is so passe! And I want to put a nice set of drapes with a floral pattern on my locker, that would make it really pop. I've been wanting to tell everyone this all my life, but I never had the courage to just come out and do it. Thank you for the inspiration!"

"I...uh...actually didn't mean that kind of coming out party..." answered the reported.

"Huh...oh...well then...shit..." Rose hung his head and silently went to the showers, where everyone else on the team quickly fled.

The Cleveland Browns have been announced as having clinched the final playoff spot in the NHL Eastern Conference playoffs today. It's a bold move and obvious by the league to try and get a team in the NHL playoffs that sports fans would actually care about.

"The Cleveland Browns have a rich and excitable fanbase," said NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman in a press conference earlier today. "They want to see their team make the playoffs, and since that doesn't ever seem to happen for them in the NFL, why not let them come and try their hand at our postseason. We showed them a fun highlights video about hockey, and they are looking forward to trying to learn how to play over the course of the next week.

"Look, it was them or the Florida Panthers...I'm the Commissioner of this league, and I wasn't even sure the Panthers were a real franchise until I looked them up on wikipedia."

The Browns themselves were very excited about finally having clinched a playoff berth somewhere. To celebrate, they all met in a Cleveland supermarket and sprayed cheap champagne on themselves in the wine section.

Their fans meanwhile didn't quite know what to make of the announcement.

"Well, I'm glad we finally get to watch our Browns in the postseason," said fan Vic Mangold. "But, these guys can barely play football, I can't imagine they're going to be able to learn a new sport in only a week or two."

The news is very exciting for the franchise, which was also in the running to get a bid from the Arena Football League to appear in their postseason this year. But then they decided there was no way the Cleveland Browns would ever really make even the AFL playoffs, and decided to just shut down the league instead.

Doc Rivers announced today that scientists from the Boston Celtics would be shutting down Kevin Garnett for repairs until the playoffs. Rivers said Garnett's knee has not been healing as well as the team would have hoped, so they were going to unplug him and remove his primary power circuits for a general repair.

"Something is clearly wrong with this model of Kevin Garnett," said Dr. Bashir, one of the creators of the cyborg seven-footer. "He has not won a championship for Boston in almost a year, and that is just not what he was programmed to do. When the Celtics hired me to build him, they wanted a player so great he could win 5 or 6 NBA titles per season, but not turn on mankind and make us all into robot-serving slaves. Last year was an absolute failure with just the one, so we'll try to improve this time around."

The scientist at Celtics Labs will go in and completely rebuild the knee from scratch, and have even considered replacing his entire legs with a hover craft or tank treads. There is nothing in league rules expressly forbidding a hovercraft, so the team hopes this could provide an edge in the playoffs over hovercraft-less centers like Dwight Howard.

Bashir's work as a cybernetics genius has come under fire recently as several of his models have failed to perform up to their expectations. But he says he expects his repairs on the David Ortiz and the Tom Brady to bring home more Boston championships next year.

Arizona Cardinals owner William Bidwell announced today that head coach Ken Whisenhunt has been fired, despite the team winning their division for the first time in 30 years. "Oops," said Bidwell in an official statement on the matter. "It appears I had set up a reminder in my Outlook a couple years back to fire our head coach one day after the regular season ended and set it to repeat every year. It's usually been a great reminder year after year, and so when it popped up today I just started the firing paperwork out of habit.

"I am truly grateful for the work Ken has done to turn around this ship, but there is no reversing what has happened here. Since the lawyers have finalized the paperwork there is nothing I can do. I also mistakenly booked the stadium for a monster truck show during our first round playoff game. I usually get to work renting this place out in a hurry after the season is over, and I seem to have made a scheduling snafu there. But, the NFL says that the game must be played under any circumstances except for life-threatening weather, so we'll just have to hope that Grave Digger is on our side."

Dave McDougle, a college football writer from CBS Sports was fired earlier this week for a decided lack of anti-BCS articles written over the past few years. Despite what should be the basis of all his articles after week one of the BCS standings being released, the writer had only 3 stories talking about his disdain for the BCS sytem in the last half decade.

The head editor of CBSSports.com was interviewed about the decision to terminate the employee and he expressed no regret over the firing.

"Look, this is what people want to read about," said the editor. "They want to hear about how corrupt the bowl system is, and how they will never change because of the money. They want to read proposals for a college football playoff, and see fake bracket upon fake bracket of what it would look like if a playoff happened today. I mean, he wrote an article about Oregon last week! They aren't even in the top 10 or the SEC! That is completely unacceptable."

McDougle defended his work, saying that he thought his colleagues were doing enough listing of reasons why Texas is getting screwed out of the national title game, and how unfair the system is to undefeated non-BCS conference schools. But apparently that was not the case. He tried to quickly type up a conceptually overused Heisman hopeful list to save face, but the decision to let him go had already come down from the top.

"I hope he's learned his lesson," said the head CBS editor. "Maybe at his next job he will realize that he needs to state the opinion that everyone in the country has, on a weekly basis, despite the fact that everyone is doing the same and the system is likely never to change. That is how you become a college football writer."

The Milwaukee Brewers put the finishing touches on their triumphant season yesterday as they lost again to the Philadelphia Phillies, and exited the playoffs in the first round. Despite having CC Sabathia, the Brewers were unable to mount much opposition to the Phillies as they lost 3 games to 1. "Well, we always knew this team had to talent to be a playoff team," said manager Dave Sveum. "Not World Series caliber talent, mind you, but enough to maybe get in and then lose pathetically in the first round. We said it all season, we are a playoff team, and we proved it with our run there at the end. I think we lived right up to expectations."

Many around the country consider this an anti-climactic end to their season that culminated in an exciting race with the Mets for the wild card. But, those in Wisconsin say it was an adequate conclusion. "We knew how long they have been working to put together this team of slightly better than mediocre talent," said longtime fan Ben Williams. "And we know that they aren't going to be able to afford this massive $60 million payroll. We are almost up to 1/4 of the Yankees! This was a one year shot to make sort of impressive run, and we sure did just that. Now, it's time to blow it up and start building it again for the next quarter century. Man, I love baseball."